Katsi Cook

The youngest of four children, Katsi Cook was born on 4 January 1952, to Kawennaien Evelyn Mountour Cook and William John Cook on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, or the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne. Her father, a graduate of Dartmouth College, was a pilot who fought in World War II and the Korean War. He died in a plane accident when Cook was nine months old.[3] Her mother was raised in Quebec and educated by Catholic nuns, but died when Cook was 11 years old. During the remainder of her childhood, Katsi Cook lived with her paternal grandmother, Kanatires Elizabeth Herne Cook, a midwife who had delivered Cook as well as many other children at Akwesasne.[4]

Katsi Cook was educated at Catholic boarding school, though she began practicing the traditional Longhouse Religion as a teenager. She attended Skidmore College from 1970 to 1972, and then transferred to Dartmouth College as a part of the school's first class of women. Shortly thereafter, she left school in order to participate in the American Indian Movement (AIM). She married Jose Eugenio Barreiro, a Cuban-born academic and indigenous activist; the first of their five children was born in 1975.[5]

Between 1972 and 1977, and then again from 1979 to 1983, Cook and Barreiro worked with the Kanienkehaka Longhouse Council of Chiefs on Akwesasne Notes, a newspaper that published articles from around the country relevant to or written about the Akwesasne community.[6]

Cook decided to pursue midwifery in 1977 after attending the Loon Lake Conference of the Six Nations. Speakers at the conference emphasized the important role traditional birthing practices play in enabling Native women to reclaim sovereignty over their bodies; control over reproduction was also seen as a method to reclaim Native sovereignty in and of itself.[5] She completed a spiritual midwifery apprenticeship at The Farm in Tennessee in 1978, followed by clinical training at the University of New Mexico Women's Health Training Program.[6]

Cook also attended the founding meeting of Women of all Red Nations (WARN) in 1978 and later did a clinical placement at the Red Schoolhouse Clinic, a WARN project in St Paul, Minnesota. There she founded the Women's Dance Health Project as a community-based initiative. Cook moved back to Akwesasne in 1980 after finding a group of women to continue the project.[6]

At Akwesasne, Cook continued to practice midwifery which included providing prenatal care, delivery, post-partum care, family planning, family counseling, and other services. She also helped develop the Akwesasne Freedom School – an independent school which teaches K – 8th grades – founded in 1979. Around the same time, Cook established the Women's Dance Health Program at Akwesasne.[7]

The St. Lawrence River that runs through Akwesasne and the reservation land itself are in proximity to General Motors (GM) plants and waste dumps. In 1981, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) announced that Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) had been found in the groundwater under GM property, and later in private wells on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation. Researchers from Mount Sinai had been taking samples from animals and soil on the reservation since the 1970s, though they had never checked how the environmental contamination was affecting community-members, notably breast-feeding mothers' milk. This coincided with growing concerns in the community surrounding high numbers of miscarriages and birth defects, which have been shown to be a consequence of exposure to PCBs.[6]

As she pursued her undergraduate degree in Biology and Society in the School of Human Ecology at Cornell University in 1984, Cook, along with Lin Nelson, Janet Rith-Najarian, Doug Brown, spoke with Brian Bush, a chemist at the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) about establishing a breast milk study at Akwesasne. In 1985, the Women's Dance Health Program became the Mother's Milk Monitoring Project which continues to provide services and advocacy to this day.[6] In subsequent environmental research on the reservation, Cook would be a bridge between the Akwesasne community, scientists, and government workers.[8]

Cook has been active part of national and international women's health movements which includes her work alongside Mayan midwives in Guatemala. She was the founding aboriginal midwife of the Six Nations Birthing Centre in Ontario, Canada which is home to an Aboriginal Midwifery Training Program and participates in community education initiatives.[9] She serves on the board of the National Women's Health Network and the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives of Canada which oversees the drafting of midwifery legislation to assure that indigenous rights are respected. In 2009, she co-founded the Konon:kwe Council, a woman-led, community-based council in Akwesasne which seeks to empower women in the community and advance woman-centered policies to stunt cycles of violence in the community.[2]

Cook stated that "Women are the first environment. We are an embodiment of our Mother Earth. From the bodies of women flows the relationship of the generations both to society and the natural world. With our bodies we nourish, sustain and create connected relationships and interdependence. In this way the Earth is our mother, our ancestors said. In this way, we as women are earth.”[10]

Katsi Cook has written multiple news articles for Indian Country Today. All of her scholarly articles are a part of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.

• 2007 – featured speaker at Live Earth Concert at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C..[1]

• 2004-2005: Indigenous Knowledge Cultural Research Award from the Indigenous Health Research Development Program at the University of Toronto.[1]

Katsi Cook married Jose Eugenio Barreiro, a Cuban-born academic and indigenous activist. They have five children and eight grandchildren.[2][5]

• Katsi Cook Papers, 1952-, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
• Indigenous Midwifery in Canada